80% of Arkham City Takes Place in Streets of Gotham

The Dark Knight is taking the majority of the fight to the streets.

Rocksteady has confirmed in an interview with PSM3 that 80% of Batman: Arkham City will take place in the streets of Gotham. That leaves the extra 20% to happen in enclosed environments, not unlike those found in Arkham Asylum.

Why is this interesting you might be asking yourself? Well, our only response is because it’s related to Rocksteady’s next Batman outing. If you didn’t know, we’re really pumped for the game. It’s also cool to know that the majority of Arkham City will set in an open, sandbox environment. Isn’t that the type of Batman game we’ve long dreamt of? We do believe it is. Let’s just hope Rocksteady can deliver a narrative as tightly focused as the first game. It’s going to be a lot tougher considering the freedom of mission selection players have in Batman: Arkham City.

Here’s the official quotage from Rocksteady in regards to the expansiveness of Arkham City:

“Our objective was not to make a bigger game world just for the sake of it. We want to fill it with content, and there’s no better world than Batman’s universe to take inspiration from.”

“Because we’ve decided to make such a large world we had to bring in more artists, animators and so on. It’s been a pretty huge technical and creative undertaking for the team.”

Breaking it down into specifics, Rocksteady has expanded its studio from 65 employees working on Arkham Asylum, to 97 working on Arkham City. That’s a lot of new heads. But when compared to the first game, it sounds like Arkham City is exponentially larger in size and scope. But that’s a great thing. Rocksteady isn’t taking the easy way out and phoning in a sequel that’s sure to sell based solely off the fact that there’s a man dressed as a bat on the cover. Rocksteady is giving fans a proper sequel that raises the stacks all around. Good for them, and good for us.